Canadian Music Week is thrilled to announce the “CMW Startup Launch Pad”, a pitch competition for new businesses that are based in, or connected to the Canadian music industry. The competition will take place during this year’s conference on Thursday, May 5th at the Sheraton Centre Hotel. “The conference is dedicated to further developing the Canadian music industry, and startups play an important role in that” states Danya Dixon, VP of Programming. The competition will offer startups an opportunity for exposure and investment, as well as advice from top industry professionals.
The event will be hosted by Darryl Ballantyne, CEO of LyricFind, and will feature merchant banker and Dragons’ Den panelist Michael Wekerle, Managing Director of Walden Venture Capital Larry Marcus, IAEL President Jeff Liebenson, Director of Mediaclarity Ltd Jeremy Silver, and Managing Partner at TAG Strategic Ted Cohen as judges. The prize package will include but not limited to:
* $10,000 cash from LyricFind and SOCAN
* Legal services from Liebenson Law
* Consulting services from TAG Strategic
* Personal, one-on-one meetings with each judge on Day 2
* A 15 minute presentation to the industry during the Global Creators Summit on Day 3
* Personalized post-conference email blast from CMW announcing the winner and company overview
* All startups selected to participate will receive CMW Conference passes and will be included in pre-show marketing materials.
To participate, startups must be based in Canada or be connected to Canada in some way. Applications will be accepted electronically; the deadline for applications is March 4, 2016. Startups must be in their beginning stage. All applications will be reviewed by the Startup Selection Committee including Darryl Ballantyne, Michael McCarty, Karen Allen, and Danya Dixon.
Canada emerged as an even greater powerhouse of songwriting, composing and music publishing on a global level in 2015 with domestic and international creative success on virtually every level, and now with further supporting evidence after SOCAN revealed continued record results according to its early analysis.
SOCAN – the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada – has outperformed its own lofty expectations by setting a new high for royalties identified, collected and distributed to its more than 130,000 members, while also reaching new records in cost-effectiveness:
* A new record for total revenue of approximately $310-million, the first time in the organization’s history that it has exceeded the $300-million milestone – an increase of at least 3% over the record $299-million of 2014.
* Corporate net expense ratio of 9% after the already ground-breaking 9.5% in 2014, another record smashed not only for SOCAN but likely for any major music rights organization in the world.
* At least $62-million in foreign royalties identified, collected and distributed for members whose music is played internationally on radio, television, online, on-stage and other public performance uses – a 14% increase over 2014, and a 60% increase since 2007.
* Total royalty distributions to members of approximately $275-million – a 15% year-over-year increase.
“When we think of Canada’s music creators we naturally think of stars like The Weeknd, Andrew Lockington, Drake, Grimes, MAGIC!, Christine Jensen, Luc Plamondon, Coeur de Pirate and Stephan Moccio, and indeed these SOCAN members have truly earned their stature,” said SOCAN CEO Eric Baptiste. “But Canada’s music creators and publishers are enjoying massive, collective success in virtually every area, whether hip-hop, alt-rock, country, EDM, roots and traditional, blues, soul, classical, jazz, film and television composing and other genres. What we are seeing now is a phenomena unprecedented in Canadian music history. Canada is a music-making global powerhouse, and SOCAN is proud to be one of its biggest engines.”
SOCAN is bringing in and distributing more with less. Royalties delivered are rising while corporate expenses are decreasing. The organization is achieving this by attracting top-talent, investing in new technologies, creating new business partnerships and alliances and anticipating the future in a rapidly changing music ecosystem.
Baptiste added: “SOCAN’s success isn’t by magic, it’s through a brilliant and dedicated team of more than 280 music industry professionals passionately fighting and working every single day for our members’ rights and the fair compensation that these songwriters, composers and music publishers have earned for their own passionate work.”
The Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS) is pleased to announce Burton Cummings as the 2016 inductee into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. One of the most celebrated artists in Canadian history, Cummings’ remarkable career as a performer, singer, songwriter and recording artist has spanned over five decades and garnered a myriad of awards and accolades, including seven JUNO Awards. On Friday, April 1, he will become the first inductee to place their name plaque on the wall inside the Canadian Music Hall of Fame’s new home in the National Music Centre in Studio Bell. Cummings will also be honoured with a special induction tribute during the 45th annual JUNO Awards Broadcast on CTV, Sunday, April 3 from The Scotiabank Saddledome in Calgary, Alberta.
“I wish my mother had lived long enough to see this. She would have been over the moon about it. I’ve received many acknowledgements through the decades, but truthfully, I cannot say that any of them outweighs this one. I watched the Canadian industry evolve from its fledgling days into a global contender, and witnessed one brilliant artist after another leave a mark that was recognized all over Earth. I’m extremely proud to have been a part of those early days…extremely proud. After considerable success in a band situation, I took that huge, frightening step into solo artist territory. Initially, my single instinct was just to keep going…keep recording,” said Burton Cummings in a statement.
“With a lot of help and belief from a lot of supportive industry people, I DID manage to keep going. This honour tells me I made the right decision, that my instincts were correct. I’m more proud that anyone could know and I feel as Canadian as I’ve ever felt in my 68 years of life. I don’t take this lightly, and my sincere heartfelt thanks goes out to everyone who had anything to do with making this happen for me. This means more to me than anyone could ever really know.”
“Burton Cummings is indisputably one of Canada’s most beloved artists,” said Allan Reid, President & CEO, CARAS/The JUNO Awards. “For over 50 years, his powerful voice and timeless body of work have topped charts across North America and continues to resonate with fans both old and new. On behalf of CARAS, I’d like to congratulate Burton Cummings on this great achievement, and look forward to celebrating his lifetime of successes with a special induction weekend during the 2016 JUNO Awards.”
Cummings is a member of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame through his band The Guess Who (inducted in 1987) and 2016 will mark the singer-songwriter’s solo induction.
With Canada’s original rock ‘n’ roll superstars The Guess Who, Burton Cummings, as lead singer and songwriter, scored an unprecedented string of international hit singles and albums. Striking out on his own in 1976, Cummings continued his winning streak with a gold record for his debut solo single, “Stand Tall” produced by legendary hit-maker Richard Perry, who numbered among his clients including Barbra Streisand, Carly Simon and Ringo Starr. The choice of producer was evidence of Cummings’ star power in the music industry. He followed that with more than a dozen hit singles and albums including “I’m Scared”, “I Will Play a Rhapsody”, “Timeless Love”, “Break It To Them Gently”, “Fine State of Affairs”, “You Saved My Soul”, My Own Way To Rock and Dream Of A Child. Sold out tours across Canada and the United States solidified Cummings’ stature as a top attraction. He starred in several top-rated television specials and earned five JUNO Awards between 1977 and 1980 for Best Male Vocalist and Best Album, serving as host of the JUNO Awards a record four times between 1979 and 1983. His 1978 album Dream Of A Child became the first quadruple platinum-selling album by a Canadian artist.
Through the ‘80s and ‘90s Cummings continued to tour including joining The Beatles drummer Ringo Starr’s All Starr Band. A starring role in the feature film Melanie alongside Miami Vice star Don Johnson in 1980 earned Cummings a Genie Award for Best Original Song along with praise for his acting ability. He also launched his acclaimed “Up Close and Alone” solo concert series featuring the singer alone onstage, recounting the stories behind his best-known songs and sharing personal moments from his career. A live album of the same name followed.
His 2008 solo album, the critically-acclaimed Above The Ground, was his first to feature all original songs by Cummings. Fans and critics glowed with superlatives citing the album as his best work in decades. Despite his many years in the music business, Cummings still possessed the muse and the uncanny ability to craft magic in the recording studio.
In 2012, Cummings released his first-ever live solo album Massey Hall, which was recorded at the famed Massey Hall in Toronto, Canada. Massey Hall features some of Cummings’ largest hits from his The Guess Who and solo career, which spans five decades.
https://youtu.be/C_fNGa26hig
Never content to rest on his extraordinary accomplishments, Cummings continues to write, record and perform. Described as Canadian rock ‘n’ roll royalty, a national treasure, and a living legend, for Burton Cummings there has always been one constant: he remains true to himself and his own way to rock.
Cummings is a member of the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame, Canada’s Walk of Fame, Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame, Prairie Music Hall of Fame, recipient of the Order of Canada, the Order of Manitoba, the Governor-General’s Performance Arts Award, and several BMI (Broadcast Music Industry) awards for over 1 million airplays of his songs.
The Canadian Music Hall of Fame was established in 1978 and recognizes Canadian artists that have attained commercial success while having a positive impact on the Canadian music scene here at home and around the world. Burton Cummings will join the ranks of Canadian music icons in the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, some of which include Alanis Morisette, Anne Murray, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Blue Rodeo, Bruce Cockburn, Daniel Lanois, Hank Snow, Joni Mitchell, k.d. lang, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Oscar Petersen, RUSH and Shania Twain.
For a complete list of Canadian Music Hall of Fame recipients or to download photos of Burton Cummings, go to www.junoawards.ca.
The 45th Annual JUNO Awards and JUNO Week will be held in Calgary, Alberta, March 28-April 3, 2016.
Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist is the autobiography of Chuck Jones, the glorious animator behind Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and other Looney Tunes characters. In it, Jones lists the actual rules of life between Wile E. Coyote and his lifelong enemy, the Road Runner. Rule #9 is so philosophical and truthful, it hurts more than getting knocked out cold by an Acme Corporation Dehydrated Boulder.
Even at the best of times, going to a club is a place full of loud music, rowdy people, spilled drinks and ‘I LOVE THIS SONG’ moments after Midnight. That’s why it’s so addictive, right? But I would actually try this: Teledisko is a full-service discotheque in a tiny, refurbished phone booth. You can select your own music, and then you and your group can do inside. There’s a stereo, a mirror ball, strobe lights, and a fog machine. And for your memories forever, the booth even has a built-in camera that prints out photos of your party when you’re done.
Tin Machine were an English-American hard rock band formed in 1988, famous for being fronted by English singer-songwriter David Bowie. The band consisted of David Bowie on lead vocals and guitar, Reeves Gabrels on guitar, Tony Sales on bass, and Hunt Sales on drums. Guitarist Eric Schermerhorn was an unofficial fifth member of the band. The group recorded two studio albums before dissolving in 1992, when Bowie returned to his solo career. Drummer Hunt Sales said that the group’s name “reflects the sound of the band,” and Bowie stated that he and his bandmates joined up “to make the kind of music that we enjoyed listening to” and to rejuvenate himself artistically. Over the course of their career, the band sold two million albums, and never really got a lot of respect from the critics, but perhaps a re-think is in order.
Bowie himself was surprised with how things came together with the band, saying in an interview with The Star Entertainment Weekly:
I’d never wanted to be in a band until we got together. And as we were getting together, it wasn’t really occurring to me that this is what I wanted to do. It took a week or so of actually being in the studio and working, and then I think we fully realized the potential, musically, for what we were doing and wanted to stick with it. I was quite happy to go off and make a solo album. I was quite excited about a couple of things I was doing, which I brought into the band and which were irrevocably changed. But that’s the nature of the band.
Around the time it became fashionable for music and political and social causes to fit neatly within each other’s desires to spread the good word, The B-52s produced an incredible public service announcement for AMFAR (The Foundation For AIDS Research) with a little help from their friends back in 1987, recreating The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s album cover.
Along with the group, you’ll see Korean video artist Nam Jun Paik, Allen Ginsberg, Nile Rodgers, ABC’s David Yarritu, David Byrne and then-wife Adelle Lutz, Quentin Crisp and many others.
Chuck Jones (1912-2002) was an animation director responsible for some of the best films – animated or otherwise – ever made. He directed many classic Looney Tunes cartoons, where he helped shape the personalities of established characters like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd and Porky Pig, and created many of his own characters including The Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote, Pepé Le Pew and Marvin the Martian.
The always amazing Zen Pencils pays tribute to Jones in this cartoon. In a video clip, Jones recites a great quote that his art instructor would begin classes with: “All of you have one hundred thousand bad drawings in you. The sooner you get rid of them, the better it will be for everyone.” In his memoir, Chuck Amuck, Jones followed up the quote with: “This was not a discouraging statement to me, because I was already well into my third hundred thousand.”
Released in 1952, the de Havilland Comet was the world’s first commercial jetliner. But engineers did not know at that point that a forgotten feature – square windows – would be a disastrous design.
We often learn the most from our failures, this is particularly true for advancements in the field of engineering. Unfortunately for the engineers in the aviation industry, the prices to pay for failure are high. The flip-side of this unforgiving industry, is that it consistently provides learning opportunities for engineers, because failure is not an option when peoples lives are at risk.
One of the greatest examples of this occurred during the development of cabin pressurisation. The problems caused by cabin pressurisation didn’t develop until the introduction of the first commercial jet powered aircraft, The De Havilland Comet. It entered service in 1952 and initially proved to be a massive success, but just one year into service catastrophe struck. Three Comets suffered fatal mid-flight disintegrations and the entire fleet was grounded until the cause was identified.
The root of the problem was double-edged. The introduction of jet engines required planes to fly even higher in order to make the fuel hungry engines economically viable (less drag in the upper atmosphere means less fuel is needed). As a plane increases in altitude the external atmospheric pressure lowers to a greater extent than the internal cabin pressure. This creates a pressure differential that causes the fuselage to expand ever so slightly. Engineers accounted for this, but the effects of repeated pressure cycles over time were not well known at the time. Over thousands of cycles and metal begins to fatigue and cracks can form at high stress locations.
The effects of stress concentration were also not well understood at the time. Stress concentration occurs when the flow of stress is interrupted. Square windows, in contrast to modern oval windows, provide a significant barrier to the smooth flow of stress. Because of this stress peaks at the sharp corner of the window, and this is exactly where investigators determined the origin of failure to be.
These combined phenomenon proved to be fatal. Today all airliners feature oval windows to avoid this stress concentration and comprehensive fatigue testing is required before a plane can be approved by the FAA. We often learn the most from our failures, this is particularly true for advancements in the field of engineering. These are now two basic concepts that every materials engineer is taught, these events allowed us to further our understanding of materials and prevent further failures.
Schecter Guitar Research and Wylde Audio announce signing a world-wide distribution deal. Schecter will distribute Wylde Guitars, the creation of legendary guitarist Zakk Wylde (Black Label Society, Ozzy Osbourne), via their distributor network covering over 70 countries, which also includes handling fulfillment of the guitars in the USA.
“We are extremely proud to be working with Zakk and Wylde Audio on this endeavor,” states Schecter Guitar Research Executive Vice-president Marc LaCorte. “Zakk has been incredible in recognizing what he wanted in his own brand and bringing the best possible product to the market.”
The first offering from Wylde Audio, including the Odin, War Hammer and Viking models, are set to debut at the 2016 Winter NAMM. Zakk has already been putting the prototypes through their paces at recent Black Label Society shows. “I’m very excited for the launch of Wylde Audio in 2016,” Wylde states. “For me, it’s the next logical step. You start as a player, manager, VP of Team Operations, then Team Owner. I’ve surrounded myself with super talented people to make this vision become a reality and having Schecter on board as our distributor is going to allow me to bring Wylde Audio’s boutique quality of craftsmanship to the next level.”
Here’s the video footage of Zakk Wylde’s January 22 press conference at the NAMM show in Anaheim, California about his latest creation, Wylde Guitars.
